Flies to Wanton Boys
by Dream Writer 4 Life
Summary: Three possibilities, one reality. Entry in September 2005 SD-1 Challenge. A Dream Writer Experience.


**Title:** Flies to Wanton Boys  
**Author:** Dream Writer 4 Life  
**Rating:** PG-13 for subject matter  
**Genre:** Action/Adventure, Angst  
**Archived:** SD-1, here, and my site. Anywhere else, just ask and you shall receive!  
**Spoilers/Timeline:** No specific spoilers; general Season 4  
'**Shippers' Paradise:** S/V  
**Disclaimer:** I barely own food. I don't own "Alias." In other words, I own nothing. Period. End of story. Wait, no it's not! Keep reading!  
**Summary:** Three possibilities, one reality. Entry in September 2005 SD-1 Challenge. A Dream Writer Experience.  
**Suggested Soundtrack:** Anything on repeat. No, seriously. Try either "Alias" soundtrack and "Send Me a Song" by off the Celtic Woman soundtrack.  
**Author's Note:** The title is taken from one of my favourite Shakespeare quotes of all time, and it completely fits this story: "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport" from _King Lear_. That should give you a hint. Enjoy!

Flies to Wanton Boys

_**Not Enough**_

She speeds down the hallway fully aware that each step may be her last. Hanging a sharp left, she glances over her shoulder as a bullet explodes the plaster next to her ear. That could have been her head, she thinks, renewing her efforts and willing her leg muscles to last just until the next piece of artwork, the next doorway, the next corridor. . . . She pumps her arms and expands her lungs with maximum effort. Her heels clack on the floor as they dance away from gunshots and even a knife or two, the pinching in her toes sliding into numbness. Kinky golden wisps escape from the messy bun on top of her head and wave behind her, bouncing to the same rhythm as the tarnished bronze fitted trenchcoat billowing like a sheet in a summer storm.

Despite her burning muscles and lungs, all she can feel is, the empty pocket hitting the top of her thigh with every step.

She did not recover the vial.

Instead, she managed to nab an entire security detail and a bloody lip.

The mission had been relatively simple: hotsexy outfit, dirtysweaty club, basement lab, smashgrabrun, extraction. APO's details on the laboratory were sketchy, but the reconnaissance team they sent in last week verified a HazMat team had entered the building and left it with a dumpster's load of bags. She entered the vast room with Marshall's dipstick-like Liquid Identifier in hand, ready to verify a vial in a safe. Maybe.

What she found was completely different.

Oblivious to the angular metal machines that lined the walls, she gaped at the long table in the middle of the underground cavern. Thousands of test tubes containing putrid-colored liquids spanned the fifty-foot-long surface, and suddenly the little stick felt completely inadequate.

Her hesitation only lasted a moment, though. She grabbed at the nearest rack and began dipping, verbally urging the bulb on the top to light up green. And its self-cleaning mechanism! She was tempted to just wipe the damn thing on her coat; no one would notice another dark splotch on it after that ass spilled his Flaming Whatever on it. Just as she began to feel like an extremely dirty robot, one of the lab technicians entered talking on a cell phone.

He noticed her immediately and began yelling in rapid German, obviously calling for guards on the phone. An alarm started blaring as she disabled the man with a quick elbow to the temple, and she caromed out of the room to the sound of combat boots pounding down wooden stairs.

The chase has yet to cease.

She mentally kicks herself for not finding the vial, for not ensuring she had enough time to find it.

"Shotgun! Where am I? It's like a maze down here!"

Hearing only rustling papers at first, his voice shoots back loud and clear: "Take a right NOW! The third door on your left should be the one."

"Should or is?"

"Is!"

Practically throwing it off its hinges, she barrels through the door and surprisingly finds herself outside at the bottom of a short flight of rain-slickened, leaf-strewn cement stairs and a narrow passageway between the club part of the building and the business.

Regardless, she scurries up the stairs and down the claustrophobe's nightmare of an alley. Just as she reaches the pinnacle, a black van squeals to a stop, and she tumbles in the open side door as bullets glance off the brick walls she just ran between. The agents peel off.

She flops on the floor of the van for a moment, relieved to stop running, before dragging herself to sit against the shell of the vehicle. Vaughn immediately pops into her field of vision with a first aid kit and a water bottle. "Are you hurt?" He does not wait for an answer before he tears through the kit.

"I'm fine," She breathes heavily, ignoring his offer of bandages and an ice pack in lieu of the water. She gulps it down greedily, shrugging off the oppressive (and steamy) coat.

He cannot help but sweep his eyes over the bare skin exposed by her strangely-cut top. But when he speaks, his voice exudes business. "Did you get it?"

Guilt and regret flood her system as the cleansing water reaches her belly. 'What-if's and 'if only's pop around in her brain like corn kernels in a hot pan. She hates to fail at _anything_, even something as trivial as acquiring liquid in a test tube — _especially_ that. Her competitive spirit and ego sit tied back-to-back, completely arrested by the bindings of Time. The frustration she feels in her gut turns to a red-hot core, boiling both her blood and the newly ingested water and threatening to explode her.

She exhales angrily.

"No."

Somehow the plastic bottle ends up on the other side of the van, completely crumpled and useless.

He issues a long, drawn-out sigh, abandoning the kit to prop himself beside her against the vibrating wall of the vehicle. She knows he is disappointed: not in her, but in the outcome of the mission, in the bad intelligence. They merely recline there in relative silence — a grungy motor and wet tires on pavement do no a pregnant pause make — tossing the tension back and forth like stones into pails until they finally have equal amounts.

The vehicle whips violently around a corner, sending both of them sprawling across the floor. She lands on top of him, and their eyes immediately lock. Their bodies do not know whether to respond, not used to being in this position with so many clothes on.

She makes the decision easier: tucking her head beneath his chin, she curls up upon him, inviting him without words to mold with her. And he does: righting them to their original position, he envelops her in his endless arms and boundless comfort.

She is content to share the anger.

But the blame she keeps for herself.

* * *

A phone trills in the darkness.

"You're _kidding_ me."

"Vaughn, is that yours?"

Another all-too-happy tune sings out to the drowsy couple.

"No, definitely yours. Wake me up if the world's ending."

Flipping on the light (if only to annoy her lover), Sydney blindly fumbles for her cell phone on the nightstand. Before answering, she clears her throat to sweep away any accumulated sleep fuzz. "Hello?"

"Sydney." Her father's crisp, pressed, wide awake voices slices into her ear, forcing her to bite back a groan.

This cannot possibly be good. "Dad? What is it?"

He did not mince words. Or apologize for the early hour. "There's been a development regarding the vial. Come in as soon as possible. I assume you'll alert Agent Vaughn."

"Yes, of course. We'll be there soon." She hangs up without saying good-bye and tosses the covers off her nearly naked form.

Vaughn rolls into the light; despite himself, he did not fall asleep again. He stabs at his eyes like a child. "What's up?"

She pauses her search for the clothes they hastily discarded but a few hours ago. "Apparently, the world's ending."

"Oh, God."

If she had not known better, she would have thought the pictures before her originated from a scale model somewhere deep inside the bowels of the APO complex. The white, bright interior does nothing to mask the purely horrified atmosphere.

Rusty cars, smeared with blackened ash from many explosions, lie tossed about in a parking lot, torn open like a shelf-full of tin cans. If she peers closely, she can see part of a mirror, a CD, an air freshener. What little is left of their colors looks like the candies in a bag of M&Ms.

A corporate building — probably the only one in the small Russian town — is reduced to only a skeleton, its seared steel girders stabbing the air pregnant with ash and dust. The exterior lies at its base like shed clothing, dirty from a long, hard day at the coal mine. The scorch marks tug at her heart.

Worst of all is the epicenter. Where City Hall, a school, and the shopping district once huddled . . . Now an unimaginably large crater dimples the earth. The roads and buildings and land around its fringe still crumble, tumble, and finally come to rest at the bottom. Again, on closer inspection, she can barely make out a textbook, a gavel, part of a mannequin . . . or is that a _real_ arm . . . ?

Peering up at Vaughn, their eyes widen simultaneously. "The vial," she whispers, unable to tear her gaze away from the last photo of the apocalypse, "it did this?"

Sloane, reclining calmly at the head of the conference table, ignores the monitors stationed around them. "It's the key chemical component in some sort of biological weapon; a bomb is our closest guess. This was only a prototype, and a diluted one at that. K-Directorate planned this as a demonstration of their renewed strength. A second coming out party, if you will."

"We have to steal it back," Sydney concludes redundantly, appealing to her father. She does not bother to hide her desperation. "Before they use it for real." Her tears threaten to spill over, but before they do, Vaughn clasps her hand tightly in his, channeling strength into a squeeze.

"I agree." Sloane slides to an upright position and produces six folders from beneath the table. "Here's your mission..."

***

_**Too Much**_

She speeds down the hallway fully aware that each step may be her last. But so far tonight, she is confident. Her tight, tarnished bronze, floor-length coat, while earning a disapproving glare from her boyfriend, allowed her to blend seamlessly into the dark recesses of the hot club. Multiple men propositioned her, some more forcefully than others: she refused admittance into a wet t-shirt contest, so one man decided to enter her himself — he spilled his drink on her.

Vaughn nearly leapt from his post across the room and strangled the poor, drunk man.

Despite her obvious disgust, she knew an opportunity when she saw one: she excused herself from the room under the pretense of going to the restroom to freshen up. It was earlier than her scheduled departure, but it meant more time; the APO informants had not been exactly forthcoming with details about this lab she is infiltrating. She had no idea what to expect.

'_At least I'll have the time to figure it all out,'_ she thought to herself as she forced open the door to the underground lab. _'Then I won't be surprised if there are . . . _thousands of test tubes! _Son of a—'_

She did not hesitate to jump into her work, dipping her Marshall gadget _du jour_ into every single test tube she could get her hands on. About halfway into the table, a third of the way down, the light at the end of her wand flashed green. With a satisfied smirk, she capped the container with a wedge of cork and searched for some sort of transportation device. Underneath the steel table, she alighted upon the tube's specified container: a six-inch-long padded, titanium prism-shape pipe that would easily fit in her pocket. Not believing her luck, she stuffed it in her pocket and caromed out of the lab.

"Shotgun, I've got the package." Her comm. crackles as she turns a corner. "Meet me at the extraction point in one minute."

Her heart drops as she hears a tiny gasp. "What? We haven't even gotten out of the club yet!" He must signal to the other members of the extraction team to make for the exit, because the music over her earpiece dims. "Look, we'll meet you there in three minutes. Stay safe."

She heaves an exasperated sigh but proceeds on. The door to the outside materializes on her left, and she quickly finds herself at the bottom of a flight of outside stairs that lead to street level.

Two more minutes.

She pulls out her cell phone, both to drive away the boredom and to maintain her cover, and begins scrolling through the lists of received and dialed calls. She even entertains the notion of playing a game.

One more minute.

The sound of tires on the wet pavement rips away her attention, and she hurriedly pockets the phone, rising from the steps and brushing off her bottom. But as the familiar black van jerks to a halt at the head of the alley, the door behind her slams open. She barely registers this before blinding, unimaginable pain shoots out from the middle of her back.

Someone stabbed her.

This she knows.

She also knows she must get Vaughn's attention, somehow climb up the stairs and flag him down.

Ew, wet leaves. Hey, how did she get on the ground?

Fog threatens to veil her vision, but before she loses consciousness (she can feel the blood sliding around on her back, seeping into the already stained coat — _'Guess Wet T-Shirt Guy was the least of my worries'_) she manages to lay herself out on the stairs before the darkness consumes her.

* * *

When he does not see her at first, he waits for a moment, the door to the van sitting open and ready to receive his girlfriend. But the agreed upon time comes and goes, and when an additional minute elapses, he leaves the van to investigate further. He switches on his comm. again and hops out of the van. He calls her name with increasing alarm, but only his own voice reverberates back at him. Unhitching a flashlight from his belt, he presses the button and nearly drops it when he sees what it illuminates.

Peeking up from what must be a stairwell is her hand.

He would know it anywhere.

The beam of light bounces as he runs over, almost retching at the sight of her body sprawled face down on the wet steps. Dropping the flashlight, he balks at his next move: should he remove the knife? Or call into APO for backup? He decides on the former, judgment clouded by the _mess_ of emotions flooding every part of his anatomy.

He does not feel for a pulse, knowing that her body would respond to his touch even if she were merely unconscious.

Turning her over, he gazes down into the glassy eyes of the woman he once wanted — and still wants — to marry. Brushing away hairs from her blonde wig, he wipes up the blood trickling from the corner of her mouth as police sirens wail in the background. Someone must have done what he did not and called the authorities.

He cries for her, for him, for the future they will never live together.

***

_**Perfect**_

She speeds down the hallway fully aware that each step may be her last. A bullet explodes over her left shoulder, burying itself into the plaster and bricks. Hugging her coat closer and feeling the comforting lump hit her thigh, she rounds another corner confident that her feet know exactly where to carry her. "Shotgun, I'm headed towards the extraction point. ETA: two minutes."

Vaughn's voice crackles in her ear as more shots ring out, narrowly missing her heeled feet. "Roger, Phoenix. We're already waiting for you. Do you have the package?"

"Yes." Triumph laces through her heavy breathing as she ducks another round.

She left the club for the bathroom with Vaughn in tow, almost-not-really pretending to be heading for a quickie against a wall in some dark corner. Unfortunately, they split up at the entrance to the basement, but not before he planted a possessive kiss on her lips; his adrenaline was still pumping from seeing that pervert 'accidentally' spill his drink on her tarnished bronze, floor-length coat.

Battering in the door to the underground lab, she sighed at the work ahead of her — predictably more than what APO had hypothesized — but dove right in. Marshall's gadget, while seeming a bit slow to the usually speedy agent, did the job well and found the correct needle in the proverbial haystack. While test tubes vastly outnumbered any possible containers, she found one of each and pocketed them both.

Right before a technician entered the lab talking on his cell phone.

Of course, she quickly disabled him, but not before he literally called for backup.

And the chase continues.

As expected, she finds the door and leaps up the short flight of stairs. A black van skids to a stop at the head of the alleyway, and she tumbles in with a barrage of bullets close on her heels. As they speed away, Vaughn climbs into the back and kneels by her on the floor, questioning with his eyes.

Reaching in her pocket, she extracts the titanium container and holds it up for him with a grin. "Special delivery."

* * *

The devastation is almost too much to bear.

Metal desks once sturdy enough to hold even Weiss's weight lie broken and twisted from the heat, the papers, pens, and mementos all incinerated, melted, and gone respectively. They can barely support a fly now. Chairs? It is like they never existed in the first place. The papers that did escape death by fire float about the space like demon fairies, zipping around the destruction in mockingly white wings with black edges; they collapse many desks with their more-than-fly mass.

Sure, doors hang off their hinges like the jaws of hillbillies; window panes lie as puzzle pieces on the floor; the shadows of flames permanently lick the formerly white walls and floors. Sure.

But it's the small things that count.

The corner of a burned picture.

A broken frame.

Lunch order notes smudged with ash.

The last remnants of a life cut too short.

The epicenter is drastically evident. Seven bodies sprawl across the singed and solid floor — despite the ferocity of the blast, it could not even shake the buildings foundations. Seven bodies, all burned — incinerated — beyond recognition. One holds the remnants of a test tube and its titanium case, foam padding only a memory. The final report will conclude that what Agent Sydney Bristow stole from the German club was actually a fake rigged to explode seventy-two hours later, but for now, the highly confused paramedics just look for a body whole enough to possibly — maybe — have a pulse.

Only two are easily identifiable. Among the ashes of one, there sits a silver ring with a diamond still so polished that it glimmers and winks in the beam of a flashlight. The other has her ashes linked with his.

***

_**Reality**_

"Heads up!"

"What? Ow! Vaughn, that hurt!"

"I said, 'Heads up.'"

"That could mean a number of things. And how do you even know where to throw?"

"I don't have to see you to know where you are."

She smiles into the twilight darkness as she feels her way over to their blanket and collapses beside him. After spending a decidedly unfulfilling day at the office, the couple decided to escape Weiss and Nadia's taunts by running away to the beach. Armed with two bottles of water, a blanket, and a Frisbee, they dawdled on their own little stretch of sand until the sun sank too low for them to even pretend to throw straight.

Instead, they stretch out together, his arm underneath her shoulders as she hugs herself to ward off the approaching night air. As the first stars begin to peek out behind their sun-veil shrouds, Sydney opens her mouth to break the amicable silence between them. "What if—"

"You can't do that, Syd."

She sits up quickly, glancing down at the sharp shadows cast by the soft moonlight and waning sun rays across his features. "Excuse me?"

He rises as well, turning his back to the Cheshire cat moon. "You can't second-guess anything on the job; you'll drive yourself crazy that way."

Laying back and nestling close, she retorts, "I wasn't going to." After pausing for a moment, she rushes, "What if time was malleable?"

He stares at her a moment. "I'm not a lit major; I'm going to need more than that."

She rolls her eyes and picks at imaginary lint on the blanket beneath them. "What if we could expand a moment so it would literally last a lifetime? What if we could go back and change time—"

"—And therefore change the outcome of a given situation?" He finishes for her. She merely peers up at him unapologetically. "Mass chaos."

Punching him lightly, she frowns and rises to a sitting position. "I'm being serious! Don't you think there's a different reality out there somewhere?"

He shakes his head even as he answers. "No. Syd, you know better than almost anyone that time is not on our side. Ever. Time is everyone's enemy. There's just no getting around it."

"How do you know?" She persists, arguing for the sake of arguing.

"I don't." His responses are still thoughtful, though she can tell he would rather engage in other, more pleasurable activities. "But we'll never be able to tell, so what's the point in speculating? Why waste time thinking about time?"

"Point taken." She lays back down, draping an arm across his warm stomach. She can sense his increasing discomfort about the subject of changing time, but one question still stands out in her head: if he could, would he change the time they were apart? Would he compact those two years into two seconds, or even delete them all together by blowing off the debrief and leaving for Santa Barbara right then? It is painful to think about, even now, but she cannot shake the question from her mind, and she inadvertently tenses against him in an effort not to let it fall from her lips.

"Go ahead. I know you want to. Ask."

She cannot bring herself to do it, fearing his answer will not be the one she wants to hear.

Her bag begins to ring and vibrate next to her, and she quickly peels herself away from Vaughn to answer it. It's her father. Apparently, APO wants to send them to Germany on a quick grab-and-run. Upset that their night together has officially concluded, they pack up their belongings and head to APO headquarters with the question still burning in each of their minds, closure never to be fully attained.

_**END**_

***

Ah, Time. One of my favourite subjects. This turned out completely different than what I thought it was going to be. There was supposed to be a gardener and a tree and clipping, and if you know the significance of that, you get extra special DW4L points. Anyways, hope you enjoyed! Again, thanks for reading!

:D Becky, the Dream Writer 4 Life


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